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E-RATE COMMENTS ARE A-COMIN’ — Industry input is due this evening on one of the White House’s top tech priorities — planned reforms of the FCC’s subsidy for school and library connectivity. The commission is indicating it’s interested in what the private sector can bring to the table, as acting chairwoman Mignon Clyburn herself implored tech and telecom companies to weigh in on the issue at a conference last week. There’s actually already nearly 400 submissions filed on the E-Rate reform docket — most of them coming from school districts, teachers, and related groups.

— SURVEY: FEW FIND CURRENT FUNDING SUFFICIENT: Ahead of Monday’s deadline, the Consortium for School Networking is releasing a study that finds most school districts’ needs aren’t met by the current E-Rate system. Cost was the key factor for most of the administrators that responded — both recurring and up-front networking costs — but geography is also a hurdle for some school districts. Twenty percent of respondents said it was a barrier to increasing connectivity, while 11 percent said they couldn’t get more capacity out of their Internet provider: http://bit.ly/1aMrLUP

CHIEN TO WHITE HOUSE RAISES THE ANTE ON OTHER KEY IP APPOINTMENTS — The White House’s Friday selection of Colleen Chien to be a senior advisor for IP and innovation will likely lead to groans in some corners of the intellectual property world, since Chien is known as a powerful critic of one element of the patent world: patent assertion entities (or trolls, depending on who you ask.) She frequently produces reports on various aspects of the industry, including her most recent report on its economic effects, based on a query of venture capitalists and start-up executives.

Her pick also further underscores the importance of which way the W.H. goes for the Patent and Trademark Office. (Last week, acting director Teresa Stanek Rea announced she would be leaving the agency.) Plus, there’s another key position open: the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator. That slot was last held by Victoria Espinel, who left in August to become president and CEO of BSA | The Software Alliance.

GOOD MONDAY MORNING and welcome to Morning Tech, where we’re doing our best not to inundate you with our fantasy football ups and downs. We do want your advice on whether David Wilson showed some spunk, if few yards, on Sunday — or whether we should drop him. Separately, we want to know what’s new in your tech world this week. Find us at abyers@politico.com and @byersalex, and catch the rest of the team’s contact info after speed read.

REUTERS: NSA REVELATIONS NOT HURTING SILICON VALLEY — Joseph Menn: “Edward Snowden's unprecedented exposure of U.S. technology companies' close collaboration with national intelligence agencies, widely expected to damage the industry's financial performance abroad, may actually end up helping...Despite emphatic predictions of waning business prospects, some of the big Internet companies that the former National Security Agency contractor showed to be closely involved in gathering data on people overseas — such as Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. — say privately that they have felt little if any impact on their businesses...Insiders at companies that offer remote computing services known as cloud computing, including Amazon and Microsoft Corp, also say they are seeing no fallout.”

“Meanwhile, smaller U.S. companies offering encryption and related security services are seeing a jump in business overseas, along with an uptick in sales domestically as individuals and companies work harder to protect secrets...In the more than three months since Snowden's revelations began, no publicly traded U.S. company has cited him in a securities filing, where they are required to report events that are material to their business.” http://reut.rs/1glcg3B

Baucus kicks off the meeting with welcome remarks, where he will tell attendees about the Treasure State’s place “on the brink of becoming a national leader in education, research and technology. He’ll add that the big-name guests will help put the state on the map, according to speech excerpts shared with MT: “Over the next two days, the biggest tech giants in the world will help push us over the edge.” The tech audience in Montana will also be looking for hints and Baucus’ latest thinking on corporate tax reform — focus on that issue has heated up since Baucus and House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp committed to marking up bills this fall.

PRITZKER, FROMAN TAKE TECH MEETINGS TODAY —Members of the Tech CEO Councilare pow-wowing with Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and USTR boss Michael Froman this afternoon. Pritzker, in her first months since being confirmed, has been on a listening tour, meeting with businesses and more than 200 CEOs across the country. CEOs attending today’s confab include those from Xerox and IBM, MT hears.

Those two Obama administration officials are also joining the president at a meeting on Wednesday with Business Roundtable executives, where the docket will include discussions over how to bolster the economy and the latest developments on the budget and debt ceiling. Also likely to be mentioned: A status check from Froman on TPP and TTIP negotiations — the two trade deals the administration is trying to lock down.

DNT SUPPORTERS LOOK TO CALIF. — Michelle Quinn in today’s paper: “Frustrated by a lack of action at the federal level, privacy advocates pushing for an online Do Not Track law are hoping a California measure will kindle a national debate….the bill requires websites to inform users whether and how they honor ‘do not track’ signals that users transmit via their browsers. It also requires that sites tell users when advertisers and data brokers are tracking their online movements..The legislation, which cleared the state assembly earlier this month, awaits California Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature. It comes as efforts to create standards for online tracking have stalled in Congress and at the World Wide Web Consortium, an Internet-standards organization.”

“California’s legislative activity contrasts with lack of movement at the federal level. A reintroduced Do Not Track bill from Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, has failed to gain traction. Over the summer, the W3C process stalled when the group’s co-chairmen rejected a draft proposal from the Digital Advertising Alliance, an industry group...Privacy advocates said they hope the California tracking transparency bill will create a sense of urgency around the need for Do Not Track standards...Silicon Valley’s Internet giants have said little publicly about the bill.” http://politi.co/17CX53Q

SPEED READ

LOOKING TO TWITTER TO REIGNITE TECH IPOs: Investors are hoping Twitter’s big announcement will help the sector get off the mat, the New York Times reports: http://nyti.ms/14YVAJY

SAY GOODBYE TO THE PASSWORD: Various biometric security systems are the wave of the future — and to some extent, it’s here, the Wall Street Journal reports: http://on.wsj.com/14YVpOZ

MSFT ANSWERS ON TAP?: The Washington company is meeting with financial analysts in a pow-wow that is likely to see intense questioning, the WSJ reports: http://on.wsj.com/14YVphM

WAPO ED BOARD WANTS MORE NSA TRANSPARENCY: The Snowden revelations underscore the need for more sunlight, the authors write: http://wapo.st/14YVKRE

HAYDEN: TERRORISTS PREFER GMAIL: The former CIA director was speaking at an adult education forum a church in D.C., the Washington Post reports: http://wapo.st/14YVQJ2